Feran Wolfpaw

 

PART 2

Three years later, no longer “persons” under law in the United States, the nearest definition that fit Feran Wolfpaw and his fellow human/animal hybrid Recombinants was “vermin.” Purebred humans who beheld Recombinants with disdain wasted no time in treating them as such, and there was little that the animal hybrids could do to stop them legally. The only humans who came to Recombinant aid were the Christians, thanks to Cardinal Booke’s Theology of Transhumans, but Christians weren’t much better off than Recombinants and could do little more than offer a hot meal and a pillow. So, Feran left the USA in a boat he stole and sank it just off the shore of Gun Cay, Bahamas. From there he managed to beg a lift to Bimini. Bahamians didn’t seem to mind Recombinants in their midst, and he found odd jobs enough to get by. He didn’t need much. Like most Recombinants, after the Court ruling forced him into a kind of socio-economic exile, he discovered his animal genes made wilderness survival almost natural. Even foraging the urban jungle was simple. Maybe the purebred humans had something to fear after all.

Only the wealthy tourists gave him a hard time, but he played dumb and they’d sometimes be sympathetic enough for the “poor senseless brute” to hire him as porter. He had left his pride along with his fight on the Supreme Court steps and had developed a shtick that put even the supercilious snobs in a good tipping mood.

He kept a kayak hidden away on the South Bimini coast and spent most clear nights out under the stars on the uninhabited cays. Locals new his habit, and so when the Recombinant Resettlement Treaty was signed, the Resettlement Authority had no trouble locating him when he failed to report to a Resettlement Facility. Feran Wolfpaw, Recombinant-at-large, had turned his back on the world and simply didn’t know he was supposed to.

Feran kept a bottle of Jim Beam buried on every cay he frequented. The afternoon Recombinant Control, under orders from the Authority, found him, he had dug up the half-full bottle of Beam on the tiny island where he landed his kayak and lay back on a straw mat on the sand watching the sky. The sound of a helicopter thrummed from across the bigger islands, and Feran watched, his ears laying back low with his growing consternation, as it loomed out of the west and began flying a search pattern over the cays. His instinct for trouble was going off again. The copter buzzed steadily closer, zigzagging over the islands. Feran became increasingly uncomfortable the closer it got. He stood and shook the sand out of his fur and then went down to the water and pulled his bright yellow kayak off the beach to the line of low vegetation that marked the edge of the shore. He hid the kayak as best he could in a hurry, but wasn’t convinced it was invisible from the air. The copter was getting close, though, and he still had to hide himself. For all he knew they’d already seen him. He grabbed his mat and his bottle out of the sand, rushed up the beach, and practically dove into the hibiscus, Mangrove, Pigeon Berry, and Hopwood, covering himself with the mat where the foliage was scarce.

The helicopter altered its course, veering from its zigzag search pattern into a straight line toward him.

“Dang,” he cursed.

The copter thrummed low and slow over the island, turned, and then hovered directly above. The island was less than a mile across, so the chopper’s occupants, equipped with decent binoculars, wouldn’t even have to move to take it all in.

After about a minute that seemed like an hour, the chopper slowly maneuvered toward the middle of the island and set down in a clear flat space of solid ground and Feran, flat on his belly in the sea oats, lost sight of it. That it was still there was unquestionable — the blades pounding the air continued to throb in his ears, and the scent of exhaust wafted on the air.

Even over the roar of the helicopter Feran heard the men approaching before he saw them. Flight was impossible, and he was sure to lose a fight, so he stood slowly, paws high above his head, facing the direction of the interlopers’ clumsy, crashing approach.

Three armed men in characteristic black and yellow Recombinant Control uniforms pointed three semi-automatic, high-power rifles at him. They immediately took up assault stances and the air rippled with the tension of the seriously determined aggression in their body language. To Feran, unarmed, tail relaxed, paws up, in brown shorts, a green Hawaiian shirt casually open all the way down his furry torso, and his tattered straw hat, the situation was suddenly immensely humerous.

“Put your hands behind your head, furbag!” the nearest officer shouted above the roar of the copter.

“My what?” Feran shouted back.

“Put your hands behind your head!” the officer repeated.

“That’s what I thought you said!” Feran replied. “But I can’t!”

“Just do it!”

“I can’t! I don’t have hands!” Feran grinned. The officer seemed confused for a moment.

“Turn around and get down on your knees! Keep your hands … uh, arms … ah, legs — Just get on your knees!”

Feran turned slowly, his grin spreading across his muzzle, and tried to keep from laughing. He lowered himself to his knees carefully. He knew the drill. A decade of protest demonstration arrests had taught him the routine well.

The officers approached and one roughly forced his arms down and behind him.

“Easy,” Feran said, irritated. “I won’t fight!”

A second officer wrapped a steel collar around his neck and attached a pole to the hasp. The first officer cuffed his wrists. “Stand up!” he said. Feran stood. The officer frisked him and clumsily removed a flask from his front pocket. Feran glanced at the officer’s inquiring expression.

“Gin,” Feran said. “You’re welcome to a hit.”

“I’m on duty,” the officer said with a tone of disgust.

“Then could I please keep it? It’s my traveling buddy.”

“No. Get moving.”

The officer with the pole steered Feran around toward the helicopter.

“Paws,” Feran said as they made their way to the chopper.

“What?” the first officer asked.

“Paws. I have paws. When you arrest Recombinants, ask them to put their paws behind their heads. We don’t have hands.”

The officer motioned for them all to stop and rammed the butt of his rifle into Feran’s gut. Feran doubled over, but the officer holding the pole attached to his collar yanked back and set him choking as the dull, sickening pain of the rifle thrust spread through his abdomen and into his spine. He coughed.

The officer sneered. “Today they’re hands.”

END PART 2

Feran Wolfpaw

PART 1

Feran Wolfpaw stole a private moment to peer into the queerly bright sky above the crowds. The deep blue seemed to flash and flare with an energy all its own as it sometimes appears to do between stray late storms on a hot August day.

“Is Allaria coming?” he asked the tiger/human hybrid Recombinant standing beside him.

The tigress hesitated. Her tail twitched. “No. She’s in Recomax.”

Feran continued to watch the sky to let the disturbing news settle. Another storm was collecting in the north. He tried to piece together how long it had been since he and Allaria split and why the time had slipped away so easily. Allaria loved storms. He wondered if she could see enough sky out her tiny window in solitary to know when there were storms outside. He wondered if she cared, shivering on the concrete cot of the cell, her fur falling out in clumps from the chemical used to kill every hair follicle on the bodies of Recomax life-sentence mammalian inmates. It wasn’t necessary, but it was done anyway to break their wills. They were also not provided any clothing or blankets, just some straw. “Recomax,” the warden was fond of explaining every time he was featured in a news spot, “isn’t for humans.” If Allaria hadn’t been broken to the point of lunacy yet, she soon would be, and then it wouldn’t be long before she found a guaranteed way out. Life sentences were short in Recomax.

Feran swallowed a lump in his throat and looked down the protest line. He frowned. Several demonstrators held “Reco Pride” signs. He told organizers to discourage those — they were too like old 21st century protest signs. Feran didn’t disparage civil rights movements of the past, but the Recombinant Equality Movement was something different. It needed to have its own identity. Opponents of the REM were quick to remind people that the movements of the past were about human differences and that the REM was about non-humans. They claimed the past precedents didn’t apply.

Others disagreed with him. “Any means necessary,” they told him, and proved it with terror tactics employed against friend and foe alike. Feran was no model of morality, but terrorizing innocent people didn’t sit right with him. Recombinants weren’t going to keep their human rights by behaving like animals. Even if, as he often said himself, cruelty were a uniquely human trait, to be viewed as human they would have to be even more humane and more civilized than the pure humans. Fearfulness might look like respect to some, but it is not the same thing at all. A fear-filled enemy, once regrouped, is a stronger foe than ever, willing even for martyrdom.

Feran, standing on the top of the Supreme Court steps at the edge of the Protest Zone, watched the people passing by below. Most tried to ignore the protestors, but a crowd of pure human stock had gradually been gathering in the Plaza to stare, and their expressions were not friendly. Tensions were winding tighter. The heat wasn’t helping.

Occasionally someone on the demonstration line would get up a little courage or ire and shout a slogan, then the rest would join in. Feran raised a paw every time and halfheartedly added his voice, but it wasn’t like the old days. His heart wasn’t into it like it used to be. Too many collarings.

“We’re people, too!” someone shouted. The line lit up with voices. Feran raised a paw-fist. “Persons! Persons!” he chanted along with the others into the thick, muggy air.

Eventually enthusiasm waned and the shouting faded and broke apart on the torid stillness into the fervent, unintelligible chatter of countless independent conversations. Feran went quiet before the others. Something on the breezeless atmosphere made his hackles bristle. An instinct born of experience gave him an uncanny prescience of trouble on the horizon. The hide on his snout wrinkled in a grimace. A black car slid slowly to a stop at the East Capitol intersection and turned onto First Street. Yellow lettering along the side flashed “Recombinant Control” in the hot sun as it leisurely crawled toward them.

“Go back to the zoo, beasts!” Feran’s attention snapped quickly to a husky 20-something in jeans and an old white t-shirt. The man glanced at the car and then his arm went back and he hurled something. It hit a canid on the front line in the head and he fell backward. Several of his fellow protestors nearby either dodged his fall or caught him. Feran didn’t care: he knew what was going down. Thunder rumbled and a grayness entered the air. Feran leaped down two steps toward the center of the line. He whirled on the step to face the protestors, ears forward, tail rigid, paws out in front of him.

“No!” he shouted. Too late. The tension in the air erupted in a ranting rage of fury. The protest line wavered from end to end, its energy building, straining in vain to restrain itself behind the Protest Zone cordon. The courthouse, with the sun sinking behind it and 12 justices inside deciding if Recombinants were really “persons” under law, loomed darkly, dwarfing the steps and the protestors. Feran felt it like a faithless David before a Goliath. Faithless. He’d become almost too cynical to care enough to fight anymore. The sky grew grim. Lightening flashed in the black clouds behind him.

“No rights for non-humans!” someone behind him shouted.

“Stop!” Feran shouted above the rising din. “This is just what they–” He saw a peculiar flash on the bared fangs in dozens of Recombinant muzzles. It spread and washed out the world in a gauzy curtain of white, and voices grew faint — all except his, which he realized was screaming — and then the protest line bulged and broke and paws, some shod and some bare, pelted all around him. He became aware of pain throbbing in the back of his skull and his head began to ache. The storm rolled in, the wind howling, and the blue sky and all Feran’s world went dark.

When he woke, he was on the floor of a paddy wagon, hedged in by furred feet of other protestors sitting along the walls. He tried to raise his head and winced. He put a paw up to feel his skull where it had been struck and found a hasp and a chain at his neck. Collared. He looked down his body where the chain passed under it and followed the dull, gray links to a collar identical to his around the neck of the tigress. She glared — not at him, but to say they’d been had.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

Roughly 24 hours later, Feran and the tigress walked out of the police station. When he stepped out on the sidewalk, Feran Wolfpaw, duly registered 3rd generation Homo Sapiens/Canis Lupus genetic hybrid, began a new life in the USA, nation of his birth, a “person” no longer.

END PART 1

Here’s the second half of a quick story I wrote to the prompt: “Start a story with: ‘The night max wore his wolf suit …’”  Part 1 is here: http://wolf.ishly.me/2016/06/06/animal-livery-part-1/

Animal Livery – Part 2

90 minutes later they were driving back from the hospital.

“And can you believe that doctor’s whistling?” Max hissed and gnashed his teeth.

“I think you are over-reacting,” Scout replied. “He was clear across the emergency room and not even looking at you.”

“Oh, come on, Scout, nobody whistles like that unless they’re calling Rover.”

“I think Max is a much better name for a dog than Rover.”

“I’m not a dog!”

“Right! I’m sorry, wolf.”

Max rolled his yellow suit-eyes. They rode in silence for a couple of minutes.

“You can’t blame them, really. You shouldn’t have sniffed the nurse like that.”

“She smelled nice,” Max said softly. “And anyway, your ear hat didn’t help any. I was sure they thought we are furries or something.”

“I didn’t know you had anything against furries.”

“I don’t. I just don’t want to be mistaken for one.” Scout didn’t see much of a difference, but let it go.

“Is that why you tried to bite the old man?”

“He was petting me, and I clearly told him to stop. Twice. And he didn’t.”

“Yeah, but then, later, the howling.”

“I was mad. The nurses were snickering, and when the intern held up the bed pan and asked me if I wanted a drink, and the whole room started laughing, well, I just lost it.”

“You’re going to have to go back, you know, if you want that suit off.”

“I know,” Max replied despondently. “Just … let’s wait until the shift changes and that run of patients is gone. I don’t think I could face those people again.” He scratched his chin with his hand paw. “I’m so embarrassed,” he said. “I’m sorry I put you through that.”

They were quiet again.

“Hey!” Scout spoke up cheerily. “I have an idea! It’s Friday, so Jason is sure to have a party going at his house. They’re always out-of-control, Jason’s parties, you know, so no one will think anything of the suit. They’ll just think your another wild party animal. We’ll hang out there, maybe have some fun with the suit awhile, and then after a few hours head back to the hospital. What do you say?”

Max looked dubious, but could not argue about the infamy of Jason’s parties and there was some appeal to Scout’s plan, so he agreed. Scout changed direction toward Knight’s Wood subdivision at the next intersection, and while he drove Max hung his head out the window and felt the breeze through the fur in the suit. It was exhilarating.

“I never realized how many smells the city has at night,” he commented.

They arrived at Jason’s house and slipped in by the kitchen door with a few stares, appreciative nods, and flattering comments about the suit. A brunette in a green tank top smiled suggestively back over her shoulder as they passed in the hall. “Nice tail,” she said seductively over the rim of a bluish cocktail. Max began to think the suit wasn’t so bad after all.

“This suit is starting to grow on me,” he whispered to Scout.

“I don’t doubt it,” Scout mused. “You have dog breath, by the way. Have a mint.” Scout plucked an after-dinner mint from a bowl on a hall table and popped it in Max’s suit-mouth. “How’s it taste?”

“Minty,” Max replied around the mint.

Scout looked very thoughtful. “Stick out your tongue.”

“What?”

“Stick out your tongue.” Max did. The mint fell on the floor. Scout tried to grab the suit-tongue. It was wet and slipped out of his fingers as Max recoiled.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Max hissed.

“Testing a theory,” Scout replied and led them to the back deck. The deck was strung with Christmas lights and overlooked Jason’s spacious back yard, which was crawling with all sorts of people. They stood watching the crowd, trying to locate Jason.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Max said.

“Know where it is?” Scout asked absently.

“Yes, but ….” Max pleaded. His ears drooped low and his tail hung limp.

“Ohhhh….” Scout said turning his attention back to Max and realizing his friends predicament. He leaned in close to Max’s wolfish head and whispered in his ear, “There’s no … uh … fly in that suit?”

“No,” Max replied. “And I’ve had to go for some time now. Since before we left the hospital. I’m either going to die of blood poisoning or whatever you die of when you hold it too long, or I’m going to soon have a very wet wolf suit.”

Scout stared blankly at Max’s wolfish face. Max’s eyes searched him and his ears shifted to follow sounds around the yard. His nostrils flared with the scents of the party wafting around the deck and his mouth hung open, panting softly in the mid-summer heat.

“I think,” Scout started cautiously, “that you should go into the bathroom and just try to go through the suit.”

“No.” Max’s expression indicated that he’d been thinking the same thought. “No way.” Max looked like a man – er, wolf-man – standing at the edge of a cliff staring at the raging river below with a stampede of rhinoceros bearing down on him from behind. “If I go in there,” he continued, “and it works,” he said, “and the suit is still dry after,” he added, “then I won’t be able to deny what you will tell me when I get back,” he announced.

“I know,” Scout said.

Ten minutes later Max returned and stood quietly beside Scout.

“Well?” Scout asked.

“I couldn’t go,” Max replied.

“Nervous, huh.”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Well, you know how wolf parts are … well … attached?”

“Yes.”

“So, I can’t … aim … down. Only up.”

Scout’s eyes widened. “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

“So, I tried straddling the …” Pause. Furtive glance. “… toilet …” he whispered, and then continued in a normal voice, “… on all fours. You know … to get it aimed at the bowl. And…”

A look of horror crossed Scout’s face as the scenario unwound in his imagination.

“…it didn’t go as I expected,” Max continued, “and I made a bit of a mess,” and then he added hurriedly, “but I cleaned it up!”

Scout sighed in relief, but Max continued.

“With a bath towel. Which is now in the trash in the cabinet under the bathroom sink.”

Scout sighed again. “Good thing this is one of Jason’s parties.”

“Yeah, but I still have to go. Badly.”

Scout looked at the dark copse that divided the back of Jason’s property from the street behind it. He nodded in the direction of the thick growth of trees. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Max,” he announced quietly, “but you will have to make use of those trees.”

Max looked up sharply and his ears fell back. His tail tucked between his calves. “No,” he said.

“You keep saying, ‘no,’ but you know the answer is ‘yes.’ You must do this or wet your breeches. No one will notice if you go all the way through and crouch down or cock your leg or whatever you have to do. Anyone over there won’t know it’s a suit — they’ll just think you’re a Saint Bernard or something.

Max looked at Scout who looked at him. “I hate you,” Max said.

“I know,” Scout teased back. Max lumbered forlornly across the back yard. Partiers parted for him as though for a king on parade. He entered the treeline and disappeared from Scout’s view. Not five minutes later he was back, a lightness in his step as he made his way through the crowd, high-fiving whoever was around and practically scampering.

The evening rolled on and the party wound up into a marvelous wild rumpus. Max had a couple of drinks and loosened up, and was quite the hit after leading a conga line and howling so that all the neighborhood dogs joined in. Scout didn’t drink, as the designated driver, but he didn’t have any trouble loosening up anyway, so that was OK. During the course of the night, Max discovered several other feats the suit enabled him to do, including some incredible leaps and a sense of smell that made him impossible to avoid in hide-and-seek. His suit-enhanced night vision saved a mousy but pretty young lady from going home without her rather powerful eyeglasses, about which Scout conjectured, “you can probably see the rover on Mars with these.” The girl was indignant, but was as bare footed as Scout, so they found some common ground and hit it off rather well.

About 1 AM, Scout took Max aside and reminded him about the hospital.

“Yeah, I guess we better,” he said sadly, looking down at his forepaws. “You know, I’ll actually kind of be sad to see this thing go,” he added. Scout smiled.

They headed toward the door when mousy girl approached.

“Are you two going?” she asked, looking hurt.

“‘Fraid so,” Scout said, “Rover here has an appointment with the vet.” And then he added, “I had a lovely time, thanks to you.”

“Here,” the girl said. She pulled a pen from her purse. “Give me your foot.” Scout put is foot up on a chair. The girl wrote her phone number on his instep. Scout smiled. Jason noticed the exchange from part way across the yard and surmised their departure.

“You can’t go now!” he shouted across the many heads between them. “The party is just getting rolling!” Everyone in earshot turned toward Max.

“No! You must stay!” they shouted. Some looked angry, even, and someone started chanting, “Max! Max! Max!” Soon the whole yard had joined in and all raised their hands, fingers curled to mimic claws, in the air in rhythm to the chanting, “Max! Max! Max!”

The green tank top girl ran up to Max and kissed him on his furry cheek. “I love you,” she said. “I could just eat you up, you’re so cute in that suit.” This didn’t sit well with the fellow that followed her who was apparently her boyfriend. He clenched his jaws, furiously gnashing his teeth.

“Get your filthy paws off my girlfriend!” he threatened.

“Down, down, there, big boy,” Scout pushed between them. “We’re just leaving. She’s all yours. Wrong species anyway.” And then he looked back at Max. “Let’s get out of here.”

They pushed their way through the house, a good portion of the crowd following behind, some still chanting, “Max! Max! Max!” and others begging him to stay.

Scout shoved Max into his massive car and drove them off, up Day Drive, through Knight’s Wood, and out into the city by Weeks Road.

“Do you really think,” Max began about half way to the hospital, “that assistant manager at Sole Man Shoes is a bad job?”

Scout grinned. “I think the shoe business got its start when a stone age con artist convinced people they needed foot coverings to protect their feet even when they didn’t. Within a generation, peoples’ feet were to tender to go without them anymore, and so they believed they had to wear shoes all the time. The shoe cartel is a conspiracy to perpetuate the lie that humans need to wear shoes all the time just to keep the shoe business alive. If the shoe business were not an extortion racket lying to the people, then your job would be just fine. But since the shoe business is really an organized crime syndicate, your work makes you complicit in lies, fraud, and theft.”

Max was thoughtful. “Do you think,” he said, “I might make it as a performer, if I kept the suit?”

“Yes. Yes, I do,” Scout replied.

“Turn left there, just after you cross over Ayear Avenue, and take me home. I want to keep the suit.”

“I think that’s a smart decision,” Scout said. “I don’t think you’ll be able to get it off anyway, now that you’re so fond of it and it’s grown on you so. I wonder how the previous owner got it off, or who he was…”

“His name was Maurice Cindnack – that’s how the note was signed, anyway.” Max lurched forward and caught himself on the dash as Scout slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a rudely sudden stop.

“Maurice Cindnack? That was my great-great-grandfather! His grand kids called him Pup-pa. Relatives always said he was a strange old dog and could do some amazing tricks. I guess they were being literal. One day, he just up and disappeared, so they say.”

“What? No way! How did his suit get under my floor?”

Scout looked sheepish. “There’s something I need to confess,” he said. “I convinced you to buy that house because it belonged to my family long ago and I didn’t want to see it torn down, but I didn’t have the money to buy it myself. I guess old Pup-pa Cindnack used to live in it. Isn’t that something?” Scout faked a laugh and grinned. “Hope you aren’t mad.”

Max’s eyes flashed and he bared his fangs. He stuck his head out the open window and howled angrily. Scout put the car in motion quickly and drove them to Max’s house. By the time they arrived, Max had calmed down and he invited Scout in for a beer for the road. Someday, Scout promised himself, he would tell Max the rest, and introduce him to the others, but that would be too much for one night.

Inside the front hall Max sniffed the air, the warm scent of simmering chicken and vegetables filling his keen canine nose.

“Mmmm,” he purred. “Dinner! And it’s still hot!” He turned to Scout. “Glad I forgot to turn that soup off. Want some?”

“Don’t mind if I do, Max old boy, don’t mind if I do.”

END

Here’s part 1 of a quick story I wrote to the prompt: “Start a story with: ‘The night max wore his wolf suit …'”

Animal Livery – Part 1

The night Max wore his wolf suit he struggled to dial Scout Masters’ phone number three times in a panic because he couldn’t get the paws off and claws are clumsy on small keypads.

“Scout, buddy,” Max practically squeaked trying to sound calm, “do you think you could swing by my place? There’s something I really, really need your help with.”

“Uh, oh,” Scout’s voice came leerily to Max’s head through the wolf ears. “You only call me ‘buddy’ when it’s really serious. Are you still upset with me for convincing you to buy that old fixer-upper you’re living in?”

“No. Yes. Not right now. That’s not the reason I called.”

“Shoo. Good. So, what’s wrong?”

“Well … I can’t explain it on the phone. Can you please just come over?”

Scout sighed, “OK, be there in a bit.”

Twenty minutes later there was a rapping at Max’s door because Scout knocked on it. Max took a deep breath and quickly swung it wide and stood straight and still.

“Dude!” Scout’s eyes practically sparkled. “That is the most awesome fursuit I have ever laid eyes on! Even the wolves would be envious!”

“Just get in here,” Max replied despondently and turned down the hall. Scout followed, closing the door behind him, shaking his head admiringly at the uncannily natural undulation of flexing muscle beneath the fur and bounce of the tail.

“That suit looks to real!” he commented. Max stopped in the center of his living room and turned around to face his friend. Scout was wearing one of his animal ear hats as usual and standing there, the two of them alone, facing one another, wolf to fox as it were, Max felt suddenly incredibly foolish.

“Where did you get it?” Scout asked, the admiration still thick in his voice.

“Under my floor,” Max replied flatly.

Scout was clearly intrigued. “Really?” he whispered.

“Yes, I was working on that room off the kitchen I want to turn into a small study and I took up a floor board that was warped. Underneath was this box, like a trunk, and in it this wolf costume. But the suit isn’t the reason I asked you to come over… I mean it is, but it isn’t. Oh, dang…” He cocked his wolfish head toward Scout. “I can’t take it off.”

“I don’t blame you! If I had a suit like that, I’d never take it off!”

“No! I mean I can’t take it off, as in, I can’t remove it. It’s like it’s stuck to my skin or something.”

“Nnoh! That is so cool!”

“Scout!” Max’s shout was almost a growl. “This isn’t cool! I can’t go around like this! I’ll lose my job, and I … I don’t know.”

Scout looked sympathetic. “It’ll be OK,” he said. “Losing your job will be good for you. Selling shoes is a terribly crooked business to be in — it’s based on a self-perpetuating lie.”

“I don’t want to lose my job! I like selling shoes, and I like shoes, even if you don’t and never wear them. I need you to help me get out of this suit.”

Scout looked a little disappointed. “Oh, all right, if you insist. You said you found it in a trunk under your floor. Was there anything else in the trunk?”

“Well, there was this note, see, and it had my name on it and said I should wear the suit well.”

“Ah, the power of the pen! So, you read a mysterious note that said put this suit on and so you, in your wisdom, determined it would be a good idea to just put the suit on because it told you to?”

“Well, what would you do?”

“I’d put it on,” Scout said, intensely distracted by Max’s snout.

“What?” Max asked.

“The animatronics in that suit…. Say something else.”

“What should I say?”

“Dude. The lips sync perfectly with the words. That is amazing!”

“I don’t care about the lips! Just get this thing off me!”

“OK, OK. There was a note. Did it say anything else?”

“No.”

“Was there anything else in the trunk, or maybe under the trunk.”

“There was just this pair of pants.” Max hooked an old pair of brown knee breeches lumped over the back of his couch with a claw. “But they’re old and ripped in the back. I don’t think they’re important.”

Scout looked sheepish. “Actually, I think they are.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“The suit is, well,” Scout crossed his arm over his chest and rested his other elbow on it and his chin on his hand. He pointed discretely at Max’s mid-section. “detailed.”

Max looked down sharply at his groin and then back up at Scout. The ears on his wolf suit seemed to droop with embarrassment, or maybe it was just the light. Scout couldn’t tell. “What’s that there for?” Max barked.

“Well it’s … never mind. Obviously, since the suit is anatomically correct … for a wolf,” Scout noted, “the crafter thoughtfully provided some pants. I bet that rip in the back of them is intentional — for your tail.”

“It’s not my tail!” Max retorted indignantly. “I don’t have a tail!”

“You do now.”

“No. I do not. Now get me out of this thing.”

“OK, where’s the zipper?”

“No zipper, buttons, but I can’t find them now.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re here, along the front, but I can’t seem to find the seam or the buttons under this fur.”

Scout approached him. “Let me see,” he said, and started feeling around Max’s abdomen under the fur. Max jerked back.

“Hey! Careful! That tickles!”

“Sorry,” Scout said, poking more cautiously in the fur on Max’s chest this time. “Nope,” he said after a bit. “Can’t find ’em. Are you sure the seam is on the front? Maybe you’re forgetting you put it on backwards and turned around inside it after you had it fastened up or something.”

“What are you talking about?” Max bared his suit-fangs in a snarl. “Just get me out of this thing.”

“Even the eyes move where you’re looking. How do you see anyway?”

“The eyes, I guess, I don’t know, I just know I can see just fine. Colors are a little distorted, though.”

“Huh, maybe the eyes have retina trackers in them, and little peepholes, like in a door. Or maybe cameras with little displays?”

“Scout!” Max barked. “Focus!”

“Oh, yeah. OK,” Scout stepped back and was thoughtful for a moment. “As much as it pains me, I think we’ll have to cut you out.”

“OK,” Max said, calming down. “Yes, that’s good. There’s some scissors in the kitchen. You better get them. You know where?”

“Yep. Be right back.” Scout returned shortly with the scissors. “OK,” he said, “I just need an edge, like where the head attaches, but I don’t see where that is.” And then he added, “Soup simmering on the stove in there smells terrific, by the way.”

“Oh, dinner. I forgot about that. I’ll get it in a bit. Anyway, the head isn’t attached. It’s a separate piece.”

“No, it isn’t.” Scout felt around Max’s suit-scruff. “One continuous piece.”

“That’s strange — I promise you, Scout, I never fastened the head on in any way.”

“Well, there’s a lot strange about this suit. I’ll just poke a hole and cut it that –“

“Oww! Dang! Careful, you jammed the scissors right through it!”

Scout was bewildered. “Ummm. Actually, Max, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did!” Max shot back, rubbing his side where Scout had poked him.”

“No, I didn’t. You felt it through the suit. It’s such a tight fit, I can’t pull it away from your skin.”

“Oh, swell. Now what.” Max went around and flopped down on the couch.

“I guess we’ll have to take you to the hospital.”

Max looked up sharply. The ears on the suit lay back sharply. “No way! I am not going out in public like this! I’ll be a laughing stock!”

“Actually you’re pretty impressive. But I can’t do anything for you in any case. We need doctors with equipment to look at this thing.”

Max looked chagrined. He pondered his foot paws for awhile and then looked back up at Scout. “OK,” he said. “You better drive.”

“That’s a good doggy,” Scout smiled. “Now go put your pants on.” Max growled and stood up.

“Watch it,” he warned and hurried out of the room with the pants from the trunk. He came back a couple of minutes later wearing the vintage breeches over the wolf suit, the tail protruding from the slit in the rear.

“You know,” Scout said as they walked toward Max’s front door. “Before you get that thing off, maybe we should detour around town and make a little mischief of one kind or another.”

“No.”

Outside at the curb, Scout opened the passenger door of his Cadillac for Max.

“You still driving this old Caddy? This thing is a boat. What kind of mileage do you get?”

“Same kind as everyone else.” He closed the door and went around to the driver’s side.

“You really need to do something about the smell in this car,” Max commented as Scout started the engine.

“What? It’s old – so it smells a little musty.”

“‘A little musty?’ Scout, it smells like a gym bag full of sweaty socks forgotten in the trunk for three weeks in August. And how can you stand that horrible whine? What is that?”

“I don’t hear any whine,” Scout mumbled. He sounded perplexed. “And, really, it’s just a little musty in here. It isn’t that bad. Open the window if you want.” Max struggled with the window crank and got some fresh air moving through the car.

Part 2 is here: http://wolf.ishly.me/2016/06/07/animal-livery-part-2/

I’m writing a novel.  It’s a furry novel.  I only have one chapter left to write and the first draft will be done.  If you have an account on FurAffinity: https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/graowf/folder/106410/The-Last-Tanuki/

A two-sentence story inspired by the joy of seeing the sun after > 3 weeks of continually overcast skies:

The rain stopped and Rebekkah saw the sun for the first time since her wedding night. She heaved herself out of the earth and shambled off between the headstones to find a stream in which to wash the dirt from her ears and nose.